Gama-Go tricks out trendy housewares

‘I want to be your favorite spatula,” said Greg Long, co-founder of Gama-Go. The company creates playful housewares and gift items designed to delight on first glance. Said spatula comes in guitar shape, and the pot holders — pot leaves.

“I don’t want anybody to buy it and regift it,” he said.

Given Gama-Go’s growth, regifting shouldn’t be a problem for this SoMa-based company. After years in apparel, Gama-Go moved into gifts and housewares in 2006. Compared to the crowded fashion industry, gift wares — don’t call them tchotchkes — has relatively few competitors and higher profit margins. Gama-Go made a 47 percent jump to $2.2 million in 2010 and estimates $2.7 million in 2011. Beyond a shift in products, Gama-Go’s founders Long and Chris Edmundson started to take number crunching seriously, which they hope will keep them on track for 20 percent annual growth.

Gama-Go first gained popularity with Yeti-emblazoned T-shirts and other quirky imagery designed by local artist Tim Biskup. Though Biskup and Gama-Go parted ways in 2006, his colorful aesthetic remains the brand’s calling card: cheerful but not saccharine, cheeky without being vulgar.

Long and Edmundson founded the business in late 2000, bootstrapping to the extreme with credit cards and loans from family. The duo started working out of Long’s basement, with Long as art director and Edmundson in sales. In the first three years, both founders waited tables to pay the bills.

Edmundson can point to their determination — falling somewhere between optimism and obstinacy — from the company’s first trade show in 2001. They set up a booth in Las Vegas, but landed only one sale. Edmundson says after the show, he felt a drive to work the phones with more vigor, an effort that landed Gama-Go in 20 stores nationwide in six months.

“We just never ever stopped. We would change and evolve and look for solutions to whatever our current problem was,” Long said. “If you quit, that’s it.”

The pair had no experience running a business, and found it was pretty easy at first: make a product, sell it for double. Things got complicated as employees and health insurance entered the picture. Though they were selling T-shirts in more than 1,000 shops worldwide, Gama-Go struggled with cash flow.

With the departure of lead designer Biskup and their continuing business problems, Long and Edmundson sought a new approach in 2006. They looked back to their days in toys together at Oakland-based Alpi International.

“We always had ideas to be in gift products, but that took a lot more money than we had, so we started with T-shirts,” Long said. Later down the road, they realized clothing had low startup costs, but was expensive to design and produce. The founders realized instead of selling $100 hoodies, they’d rather make a Buddha butter dish that retails for $20. T-shirts now constitute only a tenth of the business.

“I was struggling to give them orders because their product was getting lost on our racks,” said Wayne Whelan, owner of Therapy, a retro furniture store with seven locations in the region. Whelan says these days Therapy carries most of the 20 products Gama-Go launches each year. “I’m really excited about the line this year and direction that they went in. They weren’t afraid to reinvent themselves.”

To be smart about this shift, Edmundson and Long started reaching out for advice. As per a recommendation from an adviser at Pacific Community Ventures, a nonprofit supporting small businesses, the company hired a finance graduate student to dig into their data. This, along with advice from Long’s father, allowed Gama-Go to increase its profit margin in the past 16 months. They were “merciless” in launching only items with a 50 percent profit margin. Now every product gets a thorough review, from shipping to packaging.

“We now know what is a hit and what’s not going to be a hit, and how to make it and price it,” Long said.